#FridayGuest: Spine Chillers: The Scarecrow by Nancy Gray

SPINE CHILLERS: THE SCARECROW by Nancy Gray, Mid-Grade Horror, 113 pp., $2.99 (Kindle)

Title: SPINE CHILLERS: THE SCARECROW
Author: Nancy Gray
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 113
Genre: Mid-Grade Horror

BOOK BLURB:

Eleven year old, Sophie, arrives at her Aunt and Uncle’s farm to horrible news: her cousin, Hunt, has gone missing.  When Sophie starts searching for clues to where her cousin went, strange things happen.  The scarecrow wanders around the cornfields at night and murders of crows lash out at other animals for no reason at all.

An ancient spirit wants revenge. Sophie will have to be brave and clever in order to save her cousin…and herself!

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Excerpt:

Chapter 1 – Aunt Angie’s Farm

Sophie leaned against the car window listening to the soothing sounds of the dirt road that threatened to lull her back to sleep. When her head rolled to the side, her glasses occasionally rattled against the windowpane, waking her from her dreamlike state. She glanced at the scenery rolling by like the background of a side-scrolling video game. Even though most of what she could see was the forest, she knew that they had to be getting close to the farm. The oak trees would occasionally part revealing a long patch of clover or grass that looked luxurious in the setting sun. She imagined rolling around in the grass like a happy puppy and then exploring the woods, climbing into a tree or discovering a hidden trail.

Just as she thought that she couldn’t take wondering if they were getting close and was about to ask, she realized that her parents were talking in hushed tones that they thought that she couldn’t hear. They must’ve thought that she was still asleep. She closed her eyes and listened, curious about what they were saying.

Her mother sighed and said, “Sometimes I really don’t know how you two are related.”

Her father chuckled. “Yeah, but at least she isn’t living out in the woods foraging berries or something. Angie’s always been a flake.”

“Do you think that Sophie likes coming here? I mean, the farm used to always scare her so much when she was little, but she acted like she was excited to come this time.”

At first, Sophie thought about telling them that she could still hear them, but instead she just continued to lean against the car door with her eyes shut.

“Well, she’s always liked seeing the animals and I think she likes spending time with her cousin.”

Her mother made a snorting noise and said, “Sometimes I wish she didn’t. That boy is a bad influence on her.”

“I talked to Angie about that. This time, if they want to explore they’ll be going with one of us.”

Sophie frowned at her mother’s comment. Part of the reason why she enjoyed going to the farm at all was to spend time with her cousin Hunt. They were a lot alike. They both loved exploring the farm together and playing with the animals. They even could be mistaken for siblings because they both looked alike as well, around the same height with blond hair and blue eyes. Even though she hated to admit it, her mother was right.  Sometimes Hunt did get her into trouble, but it was always fun. They loved to sneak into places on the farm that they weren’t supposed to go, like the old barn or the woods nearby. Playing with Hunt always meant going on some sort of adventure.

She thought miserably, “It just won’t be as fun if mom and dad are close by. I never get into any trouble at home. Why can’t they just let us play? I guess, at least, we won’t be getting lost in the corn field this time.”

Sophie’s dad said in a voice that shook her out of her daydream, “Sophie, we’re here.”

She opened her eyes and stared out the window at the rows of feed corn in front of her, fascinated. The road was so narrow the plants scraped against the sides of the car. She could hear a tractor up ahead and their car slowed down. The tractor motor stopped and her dad stopped the car. Sophie craned her neck and saw her uncle waving at them from the seat of a large, green combine and motioning for them to get out of the car.

Her father muttered, “Looks like Mike wants to talk. Come on, Sophie. Why don’t you get out and stretch your legs too.”

She gladly got out and stretched then ran in the direction of her uncle. He gave her a long hug and said, “There’s my favorite niece. Good to see you, Sophie. Give me a minute to talk to your dad, and then maybe I’ll give you a ride on the tractor later.”

Sophie said, “Okay.”

She thought, “He usually seems more excited to see us. Why is he frowning? Is something wrong?”

Her uncle put an arm around her father’s shoulders and walked down the road until they were far enough away that Sophie couldn’t hear them. From the way they pointed in her direction, she knew they didn’t want her to listen in and were talking about something that concerned her as well.

Sophie walked up to her mother. “Mom, can I go look around?”

“Okay, but don’t go too far. I’m going to talk to your dad. Stay close to the car.”

Sophie squinted and shielded the sunlight from her eyes, glancing at row after row of corn. Finally, she spotted what she was looking for and carefully entered the corn, counting the rows so that she wouldn’t get lost, until she reached the clearing. Hanging on a pole in the center of the open area was a scarecrow. Oddly, there were several crows perched on top of it. One was even pulling on one of its button eyes. The black birds glanced at Sophie for a moment with dark, doll-like eyes and then flew away as she approached to get a closer look.

Since the scarecrow’s head was tilted downward she got a good look at its face, and immediately wished that she hadn’t. The head was made of a burlap sack. Even though it was just a cloth bag, the folds around the bottom and the eyes were deep, creating grooves in the material, making the scarecrow appear to have an unhappy expression, possibly even an angry one. One of the button eyes hung limply where the crow had pecked it loose, and the wide brimmed black hat on its head cast a shadow that made the body seem to leer over her like the intimidating silhouette of a villain in a western movie. Sophie stepped back slowly and then turned and ran in the direction of the car, not stopping until she reached her mother. Sophie hugged her tightly around the waist.

Her mother glanced down at her and asked gently, “Sophie, what’s wrong?”

“Can we go?”

She nodded. “Yes, we were just about to go to the guest house and get settled in.”

Sophie got into the backseat of the car and didn’t glance back in the direction of the scarecrow until they were driving. When she did turn to look, even though she knew it wasn’t possible, the scarecrow’s head seemed to be cocked in a different direction, slightly upward, as though it was watching them leave. Just as she was about to say something to her parents, a wall of crows flew up from the cornfield and obscured her view. When they were gone the head was resting down again. Sophie made a whimpering sound in the back of her throat that she was glad her parents didn’t hear and shifted further down into her seat, hoping that even the top of her head wouldn’t show through the back window.

 

 

 

Nancy Gray has published a number of works including her young adult fantasy series Blood Rain. Her short story “Chosen” appeared in Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal Author Quest: a Penguin Special from Grosset & Dunlap. Her work also appears in various anthologies.

Nancy Gray has been writing for over ten years. Gray lives in South Carolina with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys books, video games, anime, manga, and horror.
Her latest book is the mid-grade horror, Spine Chillers: The Scarecrow.

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#ThursdayGuest: Michael & Kathleen McMenamin, Authors of Appointment in Prague

APPOINTMENT IN PRAGUE by Michael & Kathleen McMenamin, HistoricalThriller, 160 pp., $12.95 (paperback) $4.99 (Kindle)

Title: APPOINTMENT IN PRAGUE: A MATTIE MCGARY + WINSTON CHURCHILL WORLD WAR II ADVENTURE
Author: Michael McMenamin & Kathleen McMenamin
Publisher: First Edition Design Publishing
Pages: 160
Genre: Historical Thriller

In the novella, Appointment in Prague, one woman, a British secret agent, sets out in May 1942 to single-handedly send to hell the most evil Nazi alive—SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SD, the domestic and foreign counter-intelligence wing of the SS; second in rank only to the head of the SS himself, Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler; and the architect of  “The Final Solution” that will send millions of European Jews to their doom.

When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill authorizes the SOE—the ‘Special Operations Executive’— in October 1941 to assassinate Heydrich, he is unaware that the entire operation has been conceived and is being run by his Scottish goddaughter, the former Pulitzer Prize-winning Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary. The SOE is Churchill’s own creation, one he informally describes as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and, at his suggestion, Mattie becomes one of its Deputy Directors.

Mattie has a history with Heydrich dating back to 1933 and a personal score to settle. In September 1941, when the man known variously as ‘The Blond Beast’ and ‘The Man With the Iron Heart’—that last coming from Adolf Hitler himself—is appointed Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, the remnants left of Czechoslovakia after the Germans had dismembered it in 1939, Mattie is determined—now that he is no longer safely within Germany’s borders—to have him killed. She recruits and trains several Czech partisans for the task and has them parachuted into Czechoslovakia in December 1941.

An increasingly impatient Mattie waits in London for word that her agents have killed the Blond Beast. By May 1942, Heydrich still lives and Mattie is furious.  The mother of six-year-old twins, Mattie decides—without telling her godfather or her American husband, the #2 man in the London office of the OSS—to parachute into Czechoslovakia herself and  “light a fire under their timid Czech bums”. Which she does, but her agents botch the job and Heydrich is only wounded in the attempt. The doctors sent from Berlin to care for him believe he will recover.

On the fly, Mattie conceives a new plan to kill Heydrich herself. With forged papers and other help from the highest-placed SOE asset in Nazi Germany—a former lover—Mattie determines to covertly enter Prague’s Bulovka Hospital and finish the job. After that, all she has to do is flee Prague into Germany and from there to neutral Switzerland. What Mattie doesn’t know is that Walter Schellenberg, Heydrich’s protégé and the head of Foreign Intelligence for the SD, is watching her every move.

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Excerpt:

KEEPING SECRETS from her husband, Bourke Cockran, Jr., was nothing new for Mattie McGary as she gently kissed her sleeping husband goodbye before she left for her office where she had to prepare two pieces of correspondence. One was an ‘eyes only’ letter to her godfather, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, telling him everything about her new mission, one he never would have approved had he known beforehand. The other was a letter to her husband on the same subject where she most definitely would not tell him ‘everything’. The second letter would be much more difficult to write than the first.

When she had been a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist for the Hearst organization in the 20s and 30s, she often had promised confidentiality to her sources and kept their identities a secret even from Cockran, both before and after he became her husband. He understood because, as a lawyer, he never disclosed to her privileged and confidential communications he received from his clients no matter how newsworthy and interested she might be in that information.

Once her godfather, Winston Churchill, became Prime Minister in May 1940 and, at his request, she joined the SOE—the ‘Special Operations Executive’—Mattie’s entire professional life became a secret from Cockran, courtesy of Great Britain’s Official Secrets Act. The SOE was Churchill’s own creation which he informally, albeit accurately, described as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.

A year later, in June 1941, at the behest of his law partner, William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, Cockran began work for a new United States government agency that became the OSS—the ‘Office of Strategic Services’—so that his entire professional life became a secret from her thanks to the America’s Espionage Act of 1917.

Now, Cockran was the #2 man at the OSS station in London and she was the Deputy Director of the SOE for Central Europe. It had certainly complicated their marriage, Mattie thought as she softly closed the door to their suite at the Savoy.

Inter-Services Research Bureau

64 Baker Street

London

Saturday, 2 May 1942

MATTIE STOOD up from her desk in her office at SOE headquarters, the outside of which carried on a brass plate the innocuous name of Inter-Services Research Bureau, and walked over to the sideboard. She made herself a cup of tea and looked down on the traffic below on Baker Street where it was raining and pedestrian umbrellas were out in full force.

A husband and wife being spies for different Allied governments raised more than a few eyebrows in the SOE and the OSS, but each spouse had their own high-ranking patrons, Mattie with her godfather as the British Prime Minister and Cockran with his old law partner Donovan as head of the OSS. Nevertheless, they never brought work home to their suite at the Savoy and never discussed with each other what they did.

Mattie was in a dilemma today, however, because they had made each other a promise that she was about to violate. For the sake of their two six-year-old children, fraternal twins Nora and Eric, they had promised not to volunteer for any dangerous assignments in the field. At the time, it seemed like a safe promise as both were sufficiently high-ranking in their respective organizations not to be sent into any countries occupied by the Nazis.

That was all before Operation Anthropoid—the assassination of SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the ‘Butcher of Prague’—went off the rails. No one else at SOE knew the reason why, but she did. The operation was her idea from the outset. She had conceived it; she had personally trained the three Czech SOE agents involved; and she was their handler now that they were in the field.  They had been in Czechoslovakia for almost six months and nothing had happened. Others might disagree, especially if they knew why she had pushed Operation Anthropoid so vigorously, but she thought she was the only one with the necessary background to get the show back on track.

That was why she was not flying to Stockholm tomorrow for her bimonthly interview with the SOE’s most highly placed asset in Nazi Germany—her former lover Kurt von Sturm, a high-ranking aide to the head of the Luftwaffe, Reichsmarshall Hermann Göring. Instead, she would be resurrecting from storage the leather flying outfit she had first worn over ten years ago—a shearling–lined sheepskin flying jacket with matching sheepskin trousers, boots and helmet—when she had flown across the country in Cockran’s autogiro in her attempt to break Amelia Earhart’s coast-to coast autogiro record. Then, that night, she would parachute into Occupied Europe to kick-start an assassination plan that should have been completed six months ago.

Travel outside Great Britain came with the job descriptions for her and her husband. Typically, they told each other when they left the country unless the destination itself was mission critical. Well, her destination this time was most definitely mission critical and she would be breaking her word to Cockran by doing so—she not only had volunteered for the mission, she had created it. Still, she didn’t want to lie and telling him she would be away for a month on assignment without adding that she would be out of the country would almost be the same as a lie.

Finally, Mattie settled on the least deceptive option. She would tell him the truth, just not all the truth. Isn’t that what lawyers did all the time? She would tell him she was going to Switzerland on assignment. Which she was, eventually, if she survived the most dangerous part of the mission. She just wasn’t going there first. She went back to her typewriter to finish her letter to the Prime Minister filling him in on her mission and instructing him on what he was to tell her husband if she didn’t make it back. She knew Winston wouldn’t like what she was doing any more than her husband and indeed likely would have forbade her to do so had he known. But her godfather had a war to run and he could not possibly keep track of every SOE or MI-6 mission abroad. From her days working for Hearst, Mattie had always believed begging for forgiveness afterwards was better than asking for permission beforehand.  After all, it wouldn’t be a violation of the Official Secrets Act for the Prime Minister to know what her husband could not.

Over nine years in the making, an old score was about to be settled. Reinhard Heydrich was about to discover that, just as Death once had an appointment in Samarra, Mattie McGary had an appointment in Prague.

 

Michael McMenamin is the co-author with his son Patrick of the award winning 1930s era historical novels featuring Winston Churchill and his fictional Scottish goddaughter, the adventure-seeking Hearst photojournalist Mattie McGary. The first five novels in the series—The DeValera Deception, The Parsifal Pursuit, The Gemini Agenda, The Berghof Betrayal and The Silver Mosaic—received a total of 15 literary awards. He is currently at work with his daughter Kathleen McMenamin on the sixth Winston and Mattie historical adventure, The Liebold Protocol.

Michael is the author of the critically acclaimed Becoming Winston Churchill, The Untold Story of Young Winston and His American Mentor [Hardcover, Greenwood 2007; Paperback, Enigma 2009] and the co-author of Milking the Public, Political Scandals of the Dairy Lobby from LBJ to Jimmy Carter [Nelson Hall, 1980]. He is an editorial board member of Finest Hour, the quarterly journal of the International Churchill Society and a contributing editor for the libertarian magazine Reason. His work also has appeared in The Churchills in Ireland, 1660-1965, Corrections and Controversies [Irish Academic Press, 2012] as well as two Reason anthologies, Free Minds & Free Markets, Twenty Five Years of Reason [Pacific Research Institute, 1993] and Choice, the Best of Reason [BenBella Books, 2004]. A full-time writer, he was formerly a first amendment and media defense lawyer and a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Agent.  

Kathleen, the other half of the father-daughter writing team, has been editing her father’s writing for longer than she cares to remember. She is the co-author with her sister Kelly of the critically acclaimed Organize Your Way: Simple Strategies for Every Personality [Sterling, 2017]. The two sisters are professional organizers, personality-type experts and the founders of PixiesDidIt, a home and life organization business. Kathleen is an honors graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. The novella Appointment in Prague is her second joint writing project with her father. Their first was “Bringing Home the First Amendment”, a review in the August 1984 Reason magazine of Nat Hentoff’s The Day They Came to Arrest the Book.  While a teen-ager, she and her father would often take runs together, creating plots for adventure stories as they ran.

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#TuesdayGuest Fragments of Ash #Pre-Order Blitz & #Win $50 Amazon Gift Card! @katyregnery #giveaway

FRAGMENTS OF ASH by Katy Regnery, Contemporary Romance/Reamagined Fairytale, 300 pp., $2.99 (Kindle)

Title: FRAGMENTS OF ASH
Author: Katy Regnery
Publisher: Katharine Gilliam Regnery
Pages: Appr. 300
Genre: Contemporary Romance/Reimagined Fairy Tale

Coming October 1st

My name is Ashley Ellis…

I was thirteen years old when my mother – retired supermodel, Tig – married Mosier Răumann, who was twice her age and the head of the Răumann crime family.

When I turned eighteen, my mother mysteriously died. Only then did I discover the dark plans my stepfather had in store for me all along; the debauched “work” he expected me to do.

With the help of my godfather, Gus, I have escaped from Mosier’s clutches, but his twin sons and henchmen have been tasked with hunting me down. And they will stop at nothing to return my virgin body to their father

…dead or alive.

This “Cinderella”-inspired contemporary romance finds young beauty, Ashley Ellis, on the run from her evil stepfather when she meets ex-Secret Service agent, Jesse Ducharmes.

FRAGMENTS OF ASH is part of the ~a modern fairytale~ collection by New York Times bestselling author, Katy Regnery.

RELEASE DATE: October 1, 2018

E-BOOK PRICING: $2.99 (pre-release/new release price), $5.99 (regular price)

PRE-ORDER LINKS:
♥ Amazon: https://amzn.to/2mNgzRy
♥ Apple: https://apple.co/2LXgINl
♥ Barnes & Noble: https://www.books2read.com/u/bP57Pl
♥ Kobo: https://bit.ly/2LJr72c
♥ Paperback: Coming soon!

OTHER LINKS:
♥ Goodreads: https://bit.ly/2Gdmnfr
♥ Web Page: https://bit.ly/2uVJnvD
♥ Giveaway: https://bit.ly/2LLpUYf

GIVEAWAY!

Katy Regnery is giving away a $50 Amazon Gift Card or Disney Store Gift Card!

Terms & Conditions:

• By entering the giveaway, you are confirming you are at least 18 years old.
• One winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter.
• This giveaway ends midnight August 31.
• Winner will be contacted via email on September 1.
• Winner has 48 hours to reply.

Good luck everyone!

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Excerpt:

My mind skitters to her face—her beautiful fucking face—and the way she stared at me with those wide eyes and her lips lightly parted. Those lips. She has Angelina Jolie lips. Scarlett Johanssen lips. Liv-fucking-Tyler from the “Crazy” video lips. Except this chick doesn’t look like Liv. She’s got blonde hair and a perfect pout like Alicia Silverstone. I remember the beginning of that video when our girl, Alicia, climbs out a bathroom window in her Catholic school uniform, her skirt riding up to show her black lace panties…and ahhh, yes, I feel my cock twitch just picturing it.

Fuck my life.

            Shit. Shit. Shit.

Because yeah, I was yelling at Jock, but she was standing behind him, and I didn’t miss the tight lines of her teenaged body under a pair of new jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. Her rounded tits strained just a little against the fabric of her top. Not enough to be dirty. Just enough to hate her. Because no guy alive—least of all me—has a right to want someone like her. Or sure, we can want her, but we’ll never have her. Not in a million years.

            She looked to be about Noelle’s age—somewhere between eighteen and twenty, and ridiculously young to suddenly arrive alone in the middle of nowhere, put up in an old farmhouse by a couple of aging queens.

            How in the fuck is this her best option?

            Who is she?

            And what exactly is her deal?

I grimace because the headlines of her story—the easy parts—start materializing as I think about what I know about her. I didn’t do all that training for nothing. Plus, I have good instincts. I could practically smell it on her—the fear, the desperation, the way she wouldn’t meet me eyes except to insist that she was an adult.

God, what a joke. If she’s an adult, I’m a French poodle.

Then something occurs to me: it was Jock’s boyfriend, Gus, who gave away the most important part of her story away.

She has nowhere else to go.

And then something else occurs to me, and I wonder, Is she in hiding?

This girl—what’s her name? Amber? Audrey?—is in trouble. Big trouble. The kind of trouble that gets other people in hot water when they were just trying to live their lives and mind their own business. And she’s been dumped on my doorstep. Literally.

 

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katy Regnery started her writing career by enrolling in a short story class in January 2012. One year later, she signed her first contract, and Katy’s first novel was published in September 2013.

Thirty-five books later, Katy claims authorship of the multititled New York Times and USA Today bestselling Blueberry Lane Series, which follows the English, Winslow, Rousseau, Story, and Ambler families of Philadelphia; the six-book, bestselling ~a modern fairytale~ series; and several other stand-alone novels and novellas, including the critically-acclaimed, USA Today bestselling contemporary romance, Unloved, a love story.

Katy’s first modern fairytale romance, The Vixen and the Vet, was nominated for a RITA® in 2015 and won the 2015 Kindle Book Award for romance. Katy’s boxed set, The English Brothers Boxed Set, Books #1–4, hit the USA Today bestseller list in 2015, and her Christmas story, Marrying Mr. English, appeared on the list a week later. In May 2016, Katy’s Blueberry Lane collection, The Winslow Brothers Boxed Set, Books #1–4, became a New York Times e-book bestseller.

Katy’s books are available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish.

Katy lives in the relative wilds of northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, where her writing room looks out at the woods, and her husband, two young children, two dogs, and one Blue Tonkinese kitten create just enough cheerful chaos to remind her that the very best love stories begin at home.

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#FridayGuest: Catherine Wyatt-Morley & Jalyon Welsh-Cole, authors of I Am The Product of Rape

Catherine Wyatt-Morley is the founder, chief executive officer and heartbeat of Women On Maintaining Education and Nutrition, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social service organization for the at-risk and HIV-positive community. In 1994, Wyatt-Morley founded Women On Reasons To Heal (W.O.R.T.H.), the first and what has become the oldest HIV-positive women’s support group in Middle Tennessee. 

Wyatt-Morley has appeared in countless media outlets nationwide, including SELF Magazine, the Today Show, A&U Magazine, POZ Magazine, CNN, Voices of America, MSNBC, Talk America Radio, FX Radio, SiriusXM Satellite Radio, the Palm Beach Post, the Indianapolis Indiana Recorder, the Los Angeles Times, the Canadian Sun, Nashville Scene, and the Tennessean. 

Jalyon Welsh-Cole has been director of Women On Maintaining Education and Nutrition, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit social service organization, since 2010. Welsh-Cole began writing when she was very young, starting with short stories and poems. As a teen, she was inspired to draw, finding comfort and creativity in her art. She joined forces with Wyatt-Morley to share her story in I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR. Together, they also have created #HealingSecretHurts workshops, which bring the spectrum of traumatizing sexual assault into the light.

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BOOK BLURB:

The phrase “secrets and lies” takes on terrible new meaning in Catherine Wyatt-Morley’s devastating book, I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR.

Wyatt-Morley’s shocking story traces the repeated patterns of rape and incest that plagued four generations of her family, including Wyatt-Morley’s birth in a filthy basement to her 12-year-old mother, who was sexually abused by her step-father.

“…In the process of writing this book, an extremely difficult journey that has taken years, I was taken to unfamiliar destinations and exposed to unfathomable pain,” Wyatt-Morley relates. “Part of that pain was learning that I was created through the atrocities of incest by a brutally manipulative monster and, while only moments old, (I was) denied by a heartless grandmother who never bothered to look at me.”   

Wyatt-Morley wrote I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR, she says, “as my way of dealing with my personal healing. But through conversations with many diverse women, I quickly began seeing I was not alone. So many had never told anyone of the abuse that has happened to them; yet they have a need to heal, to not feel isolated.”

Wyatt-Morley’s daughter, Jalyon Welsh-Cole, also suffered the terrible legacy of her family when she was abused by her eldest brother. She wrote the epilogue to I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR, an essay she called BURNING HOUSE, in response to the continued pattern of abuse that formed her familial legacy.

“Most of my family members who have learned of this are dealing with it as well as one can,” Welsh-Cole says. “However, others are still in disbelief and struggle to understand. For over two decades I kept this heinous secret to myself. I have had time to bury it, cry over it, and finally seek therapy and come to grips with it.”

Welsh-Cole’s mother’s story “made me feel as if our bloodline was full of secrets and lies that I wanted to expose,” she continues. “I knew after learning of my grandmother’s story that I wasn’t alone. Today, I cannot allow this to continue to happen in our family.”

As dark and unrelenting as it is, the story told in I AM THE PRODUCT OF RAPE – A MEMOIR leads to a conclusion of overcoming tremendous odds, leaving readers riveted, inspired, and empowered.

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What’s inside the mind of a nonfiction author?

Nonfiction authors’ minds are not any different from any others but, we do have a tenacious desire to impart wisdom and lived experience shining a floodlight on the truth we all know exists but are sometimes too fearful to talk about.

 

What is so great about being an author?

 

I have a passion for educating and empowering others. I have a personal need to tell my story. I am grateful of having my name on the jacket of I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir, and for the privilege of having my words available to an audience of readers around the world. Lastly, I am humbled to be ability to use our movement in bridging the gaps of sexual assault disparities.

When do you hate it?

I have not yet experienced a reason to hate being an author.

What is a regular writing day like for you?

Typically I write at night, unless I’m on a time frame in which I must write during the day. My night would consist of me, a dark room and my laptop.

How do you handle negative reviews?

I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir, my mother and I have received exceptional reviews. I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir has proven to be therapeutic for readers. However, my mother and I are fully aware that everyone is entitled to their own option. We are strong believers in not being bully’s.  There are ways of relaying what you want to say in a productive none bullying manner.

How do you handle positive reviews?

For I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir and the subjects discussed, positive reviews would be those of overcoming trauma, having the courage to find one’s biological family, seeking mental health services for past trauma, or being courageous enough to stop abuse from continuing. We are blessed to have had such a positive impact and we hope I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir will continue to receive positive reviews and help people heal.

What is the usual response when you tell a new acquaintance that you’re an author?

Fascination, most people are very interested and inquisitive.  They don’t see what went into the process of becoming an author, they only see the results.  Being an author to me is not about the frills it’s about the passion and drive to share your words with the world and make a difference.

What do you do on those days you don’t feel like writing? Do you force it or take a break?

True believer that self-care is the best care, if I’m just not feeling it I will take a break even if it’s only for a few hours. Forced writing for me is NOT me best style of writing.

Any writing quirks? 

I don’t really have many quirks about my writings but I guess one thing I think is unique about my writing style is that I write my best stuff at night in the dark when my son has went to bed. I seem to drift into my thoughts easier during this time have written great work because of it.

What would you do if people around you didn’t take your writing seriously or see it as a hobby?

I would continue to write, I cannot allow others to dictate the outcome of my passion or what I enjoy doing.

Some authors seem to have a love-hate relationship to writing. Can you relate?

OH, Yes! Very much. I love the act of writing and getting my thoughts out on paper. However I hate actually typing and reading. I find this to be an issue in a lot of authors. 

Do you think success as an author must be linked to money?

My mother and I will measured I Am the Product of Rape—A Memoir success when it and our other materials are available to most everyone that need them, when I Am the Product of Rape ―A Memoir is translated into the worlds languages and when I Am the Product of Rape ―A Memoir and our other materials help the global platform eliminate disparities.

What has writing taught you?

Writing has open my vocabulary and expanded my communication skills.  I have learned better ways to communicate with the world through words by sharing what I write. I have learned it’s not what you say, but how you say it. The power of observation, reasoning and problem solving, increased knowledge of grammar, fearlessness and taking chances has provide self-growth.

Leave us with some words of wisdom.

I would like to close by telling our readers that it is ok to speak out about trauma. It’s ok to seek help regardless of your upbringing or race. It’s important that people understand that silence is the gateway to mental health issues and by seeking help you reduce your mental health crises dramatically. For those like me that have endured trauma through a mental health facility I say, please do not give up seeking support and help. It took me several attempts to find the therapist that fits best for me and my trauma. Make sure you are seeking a professional who is skilled in your type of trauma. I didn’t know I should be aware of that so I’ll pass that advice on to those readers who need it. 

Lastly, I would say the support of best friends, a close trusted relationship, is vital. When you’re having rough days healing or days that just seem to be a struggle to make it through that person can carry you when you can’t carry yourself. For me, that person is my best friend, my mentor, my amazing mother. I honestly don’t know what I would do without her selfless support with my grueling mental health issues. She has never complained and is always there having my back.